WINTER PEARS . . . . . . . watercolour Poem: My Mother's Pears

My Mother's Pears

By Stanley Kunitz

1905-2006

Worcester, Massachusetts

Plump, green-gold, Worcester's pride,

transported through autumn skies

in a box marked HANDLE WITH CARE

sleep eighteen Bartlett pears,

hand-picked and polished and packed

for deposit at my door,

each in its crinkled nest

with a stub of stem attached

and a single bright leaf like a flag.

A smaller than usual crop,

but still enough to share with me,

as always at harvest time.

These strangers are my friends

whose kindness blesses the house

my mother built at the edge of town

beyond the last trolley-stop

when the century was young, and she

proposed, for her children's sake,

to marry again, not knowing how soon

the windows would grow dark

and the velvet drapes come down.

Rubble accumulates in the yard,

workmen are hammering on the roof,

I am standing knee-deep in dirt

with a shovel in my hand.

Mother has wrapped a kerchief round her head,

her glasses glint in the sun.

When my sisters appear on the scene,

gangly and softly tittering,

she waves them back into the house

to fetch us pails of water,

and they slip out of our sight

in their matching middy blouses.

I summon up all my strength

to set the pear tree in the ground,

unwinding its burlap shroud.

It is taller than I.  "Make room

for the roots!" my mother cries,

"Dig the hole deeper."

WHIMSICAL VERSION

CHICKENS 'N' ROOSTERS . . . . . . . . . watercolour/poetry

ROOSTERS

                                                                    The crown of red

                                                               set on your little head

                                                    is charged with all your fighting blood.

                                                            Elizabeth Bishop   1911–1979

From "The Blue Hen's chickens and

other poems" 

by

Thomas Irons 1915

THE MORNING COMETH 

THE light rims on the eastern way. 

The cheerful harbinger of day; 

The cocks are early crowing. 

The stars are fading, one by one, 

The dark and lonesome night is done; 

The early daylight's showing. 

Awake! awake! 'tis early morn, 

Another happy day is bom, 

The feathered warblers wooing. 

The day is coming — darkness gone. 

We have another glorious dawn; 

Our love of life renewing. 

All nature gladdens with the morn, 

A deeper gladness in us born; 

The world with light's o'erflowing. 

The lambs, in gladness, skip and play, 

The birds sing out a roundelay, 

The flowers faster growing. 

The horse neighs out his glad surprise. 

The watch dog hears the distant cries 

From fields with light aglowing. 

The happy, winged creatures pass, . . .